


A Trip Down Paradise Alley

by Fontainebleau, lazaefair



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Dancer/Assassin!Billy, Genetically-Enhanced Supersoldiers, Giant Alien Slugs, M/M, Pimp!Goody, Valerian And The City of A Thousand Planets AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-10-26 06:50:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20737997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fontainebleau/pseuds/Fontainebleau, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazaefair/pseuds/lazaefair
Summary: On Alpha Station, home to a thousand races from across the galaxy, Paradise Alley offers its customers every pleasure known to humanity - for a price. At the Glam Club owner and impresario Goodnight Robicheaux presides over a show that's exotic, erotic and hypnotic, his star attraction the dancer Billy Rocks.But neither Billy nor Goodnight is exactly what they seem, and when Goodnight's past comes calling they have to decide how far they're prepared to go to protect what they have.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Our belated contribution to the Magnificent Seven Reverse Big Bang 2019! This is an AU set in the world of _Valerian and The City of A Thousand Planets_, in which Ethan Hawke played a cameo role as Jolly the Pimp, proprietor of the Glam Club:
> 
>   
As well as lazaefair's [wonderful art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24483631) for this AU, there is also a music mix which can be accessed [here](https://www.mixcloud.com/anonimiscat/goodrocks-valerian/) or [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZcCUfb47V2SP-xJOhhtK0nTIiaURrkPs)
> 
> Alpha Station, on which this fic is set, is an artificial world where every race in the universe has a presence; everybody's there. So the background to this fic is drawn from as many SF books, films, games and TV shows as I could fit in; I hope you recognise some of your favourites. 
> 
> A full list of source material is in the endnotes, but special mentions here to Sheri S. Tepper for the Porsa, to Tony Daniel for the StarCorps, and to Ian Gibson for multiple worldbuilding details.
> 
> Thanks to lazaefair for her wonderful art and prompt, and for feedback along the way; to airshipmechanic and hanajimasama for advice and support, and to the Mag7 RBB Discord for inspiration.

Paradise Alley’s always rammed, nightcycle or daycycle, every dek of the year: the clubs never close and every doorway is a different show, traumparlours and holostim cabarets, droud hookups and bubbletank joints, all touting for trade with flickering subliminals, synthscent sprays and good old-fashioned come-ons. It’s a human universal, the desire to get wasted, get high and get laid, and Paradise Alley caters for every taste, no judgment except for the colour of your creds. 

Straight through the gate it was a milling chaos of barkers, dealers, window-shoppers and paying spacerats, most of them human or trying to pass as human, but a scatter of other races too: four big Twi’leks carrying some Hutt high-up in a palanquin, a pair of Arieki picking along with their weird little zelle things, and a Proximan stumping through not looking where it put its tail. 

Was a long time since I’d been in a crowd like that, long time since I’d been anywhere counted as planetsider life, and it made my skin crawl: normally I’d have shoved straight through the whole freakshow, let ‘em see what I am so they give me a wide berth, but I wasn’t there to play my hand too early. So I let myself get jostled and cursed at, trailing along behind a bunch of galactic liner tourists gawking around like Honchi with their eyestalks out. 

Place I was after was a good way in, and going so slow made me a mark: a catgirl wrapped in an envelope of stimscent persuasion tried to take my arm, _Let’s be friends, spacer_; I bounced off her into a pair of twin androgynes offering a blasterpipe, _Launch you so high you’ll think Alpha’s orbiting round you_, then a skinny kid used his weird attenuated arm to grip my bicep, hissing _Bloodlace jellies?_ I grabbed his wrist, squeezed till it crunched and left him doubled up – then I ground my teeth, called up a visual overlay to help skirt the sense-clouds around me and shouldered on until I saw the sign. 

Glam Club didn’t seem any different from the hundred others I’d passed, music pumping out from behind a set of pillars and a glass curtain under a big flashing sign, but the man on its doorstep was giving it all he’d got: ‘Most alluring dancers this side of the Tempter’s Veil, set you burning with the heat of a supernova, finest show on the station.’ 

He was dressed up like a Hooper trashboy in a green neon-lit jacket and nose-chain under a dumb hat, and when he saw me pause to listen he was on me quick as a starving Salarian. ‘Prowling the Alley for a night of delight, spacer? Glam Club’s got pleasures to tempt the man of discrimination.’ 

‘Think you may have what I’m looking for,’ I said, and I lifted my head; my hair’s longer now, down my back in locks, and my skin a darker blue-black from anti-radiation mods, but he wouldn’t forget. 

Sure enough the expression kind of drained out of his face leaving the smile pasted on. ‘Olosuga.’ Couldn’t say there was a whole lot of enthusiasm there, and I didn’t blame him. ‘Small galaxy.’ 

I stepped up closer. ‘Been around, out and back, but you know what they say, every wandering spacer fetches up on Alpha sooner or later.’ I could tell he wasn’t buying it: he might be hiding what he was under a layer of eyeblack and Hooper rags, but he was still the Goody I knew under there. ‘Going to ask me inside?’ 

I had a readout on him, vitals ticking away in my peripheral vision, and I could tell he was spooked, adrenaline spiking; the last thing he’d be expecting was a wartime buddy come by to relive the old days. 

I saw the deflection coming before it was out of his mouth: ‘Dance and trance won’t be your kind of spice – let me hook you up with a blasting traum—‘ 

‘Finest show on the station,’ I reminded him. If what I’d heard was true he wouldn’t fight: Goody was trying to pass as human these days. I let him see my grin. ‘I’d say the entertainment starts right here.’ 

He glanced up and down the street, but wasn’t like I’d given him a choice. He threw an arm around my shoulder, playing his part. ‘Come inside and grab a bulb.’ 

The club was like every other one on the Alley, pranked out with lights and glitter but scuffed and grubby if you looked close, though it was busy, customers lounging at tables in front of the stage, a lightshow pulsing in time with the tinny music. 

‘Check your blaster, cowboy?’ A young girl, face and arms rippling with aqua tattoos, stood under a cluster of suspended weapons: I spread my hands and looked at Goodnight. 

‘My spacer friend’s not armed,’ he told her. 

‘Goody and I go way back,’ I said, just to see him squirm, ‘Could tell you some stories. Like that time on Nasq—‘ 

‘Go fetch us some bulbs, kitten,’ he interrupted. ‘And tell the bar my friend gets the star-class treatment.’

He led the way to a little private table on a platform right up against the stage. As I followed him I jacked up my res to scan him properly, and sure enough it was all still there: usa-splice, salarian-splice, hyper-sense array. Starcorps standard and Goodnight being a sniper, he had some ophidapt mods for focus too: once in, all in. 

‘Take a load off.’ He dusted off the chair with a flourish, playing the host, but when he went to recline it I caught his wrist and we locked eyes for a moment, then he laughed it off and sat down beside me, though when the aquagirl brought our bulbs over he sent her away with a little shake of his head. 

‘So what’s the show?’ I asked. ‘Heard you used to have a Glamopod.’ 

That riled him like it was meant to: ‘Got took in by some rogue EarthMil pup selling a line about freedom and exploitation, and ended up like it always does, with a commendation for him and her dead.’ 

‘So what’s the deal now?’ I took a squirt of the bulb while I gave the place a once-over, heat-sigs, vitals, subliminals: customers were all what they seemed to be, mostly human with just a scattering of others – a pair of Vandeeni matrons in flowing robes delicately crunching a plate of fried grubs, a spidery Chori hunched awkwardly in its seat, and a bunch of Kaminoans sharing an aquatube – all watching the stage with an air of expectation. 

‘Something exotic, erotic and hypnotic,’ he promised, ‘lay back and enjoy,’ and right on cue the music started to thump louder and glitter-haze came billowing out across the stage. 

First up was a six-clone, male, female and all points between, long-legged and graceful with hair in shades of turquoise: they were pretty enough and athletically imaginative, and if I hadn’t had my hormonal responses damped out long ago I might have found their act less dull. The audience liked it OK, though in my overlay I could see the puffs of synth-scent aphros squirting out to encourage them. Goody was watching the crowd, gauging their reactions, and looking close I could see the flicker of yellow and red across his iris as he ran the schematics, same as me. 

The sixclone ended in a complex knot of limbs and appendages, then the lights went down and the music changed to something deeper, bass and slow; the crowd began to hum and shout, the Chori sending out little sprays of anticipation. Goody leaned over. ‘Star attraction.’ 

A spotlight hit the stage and lit up a single man standing motionless, his face angular and serious, muscular torso bare above a plain black half-suit. Compared to what we’d just seen he was dull – no costume, no body mods, not even a spatter of livepaint: all he had was some metal pins keeping his long hair up. I scanned him in a wave of colour, red for physical, green for augs, purple for cybersense, and came up blank. Goody saw me do it: ‘Really?’ I asked him. All this excitement in Paradise Alley where everything’s exotic and jacked-up and boosted, for a single baseline human? 

Goody winked. ‘Wait and see.’

The man began to dance, flowing movements against the slow beat, and I had to admit there was something compelling about him. I’ve seen my share of entertainment, and underneath the tease and the seduction there’s always the tick of desperation, _see me, love me, want me_, laying themselves open so you can take what you want. But this one – he was showing himself off, his looks and power and grace, but he moved like he was the predator and the whole of the audience his prey. 

He seemed to hold each gaze, dark and direct, not challenging or flirting, but like he was taking the measure of each entity there; made me think of a hamadryad – can’t take your eyes off it until its coils are already wound tight around you. Then with a hamadryad’s strike something bright came darting out from his hand; someone cried out, high and choked off, and there was one of the silver pins from his hair sticking into the table a span from a man’s face. The audience shouted and pounded the tables; had to be a trick, I reckoned, a guidance chip maybe, and I started to say so to Goody, but this time he was as rapt on the stage as the rest of them. 

The music was faster now, the man moving swift and hypnotic, hair starting to slide over one shoulder, in the spotlight like he was the only living thing in the club: there was another flash of silver and a trill from the Vandeeni as a pin stabbed into the dish in front of them. He was smiling now, a tiny tilt to his mouth; he moved and flowed, sinuous as a snake, and those dark eyes found mine, looking right down into me like he knew what I was and could still find in me some memory of wanting from long ago – then I jerked backwards as a stiletto landed right between my fingers, bursting the bulb of alcohol over my hand. 

I was out of my chair in a split, primed to fight – no one should be able to sucker me that way – but another cheer went up all round and I had to stamp the reflex back down while Goody grinned wide as a hiver. I sat back down and tapped at the pin: some kind of prop, it had to be, but no, it was a hard metal filigree thing with a wicked diamond point. I could see why he drew a crowd.

When he was done and the lights went down the club came buzzing back to life: Goody was elated. ‘Good, yeah?’ 

‘Good enough for a crowd like this.’ I flicked the pin where it stood in the table. ‘Surprised you can stand to give away toys like these.’ His face shuttered down, though he was still just willing to keep up the act like we were friends. 

‘They’re biokeyed.’ He spread his hands. ‘You’ve seen the show, what now? Company? Holostim booth? Got some jellies will go straight to your orbitofrontal cortex.’ 

‘None of that for me, you know that.’ I stretched out in the chair. ‘I thought we could revisit old times.’ 

The mask dropped off his face at once. ‘Not interested.’ 

‘Remember Nasqueron?’ I asked, as though I hadn’t heard. ‘Never forget seeing those gasbags come raining out of their biodome when you nailed it with the photon cannon. Way they burst when they hit the cloud layer. Or the orbital at Criswell—‘ Goody gave me a look of pure hatred, eyes wolf-pale against the black. Of course he remembered: he touched the stiletto and it came loose, twirling it in his fingers. ‘You’re not going to use that,’ I told him, ‘and we both know how AlphaSec feels about flyboy vagrants.’ 

His vitals spiked into fight mode at the name and I tensed, but all at once the dark dancer was there behind him, a hand on Goody’s shoulder. ‘Problem, Goody?’ 

‘Olosuga’s an old … associate,’ he told him. ‘Olosuga, Billy.’ 

‘Take a hike, kitten,’ I told him. ‘I’m not your type.’ 

He leaned over and plucked his stiletto from Goody’s fingers, eyes on mine. ‘Everyone’s my type.’ He smiled wider, with just a flash of something dark in it. ‘One way or the other.’ He squeezed Goody’s shoulder. ‘Catch you after.’ 

‘Tasting the merchandise?’ I asked Goody. It was too good to pass up: I’d seen how his heartbeat slowed right down when the dancer touched him. 

His face twisted. ‘What do you want here, Olosuga? Just spit it out so we can be done.’ 

I leaned forward. ‘Let’s call it a favour. Something you can get for me. A Titanian symbiont.’ 

Goody laughed then like I’d made a real joke, his tooth jewel flashing. ‘Right, we keep a breeding colony of them in the tank behind the bar.’ I just stared at him until he said, like I was a shredder, ‘They’re not allowed on the station.’ 

I looked at him levelly. ‘That so? You’ve got connections.’ I pushed a gold credchip across the table. 

‘What do you want it for?’ 

‘Coring and thralling,’ I said, just to see the look on his face. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve developed moral scruples? Shame when you think what you were capable of.’ 

Goody flicked the chip off the table to land by my foot. ‘Get out of my joint.’ 

I smiled as I stood up. ‘Find it, buy it, deliver it. I’ll owe you a favour.’ The dark dancer was still watching: I looked him up and down as I passed. ‘Enjoyed the show. I’ll certainly come by and see it again.’ 

\--

Goodnight gives his last inebriated punter a helpful shove down the steps of the Glam Club, pauses for a moment to appreciate the ensuing altercation as the man cannons into a Skandar hawker, sending the beads draped over all four of its arms skittering underfoot, then heads back inside. He flicks off the neon sign, shuts off the stage effects and kills the music; shorn of its glamour the theatre feels as threadbare as he does. In his own small quarters behind the stage he sheds clothes and jewellery, stands in the refresher unit while a dollop of cleaner gel oozes from his head to his feet and down the drain, and then scuffs through the disarray for a clean undershirt. The windowless room would be cramped even if it was tidy, but he prefers it as it is: letting bottles lie fallen under the unmade bed and clothes spill out of their locker is a tiny encouragement to himself, I’m not the man I was.

He repaints his eyes, then goes out through the theatre again, snags a bottle of trax spirit from under the bar and climbs the ladder to Billy’s eyrie. The first time Billy had said, Come up, had admitted him to his rooftop redoubt, he’d been dazzled. Not by the clean pale contours of the room, its pristine worksurface and bars for training at one end and the curved white couch at the other – no, what had him staring open-mouthed was the skylight, a panel let in above the couch, lensed to look up and out through the curve of the sector wall, straight into the heart of Alpha. _Plasdiamond_, Billy had said casually, as though that much plasdiamond wouldn’t buy the whole quarter and everyone in it, as though the view didn’t make the space as extraordinary as Billy himself. 

The sectors are stacked edge to edge above and around one of the lattice wells that pierce the station like bubbles, each tiny world distinct: bright and cloudy, ocean blue, desert red and metropolis grey. When Billy had first taken him to his bed it was in a spinning dream of weightless grandeur, lying on the curved couch, looking up become looking down, as though he could tumble headlong into the majestic spectacle. 

Right now Billy’s sitting at the table looking at something through a magnifier. ‘Nanomite bug.’ He tilts it so Goodnight can see. ‘Disabled it.’ 

Goodnight shrugs. ‘Standard protocol.’ He deposits the bottle next to the couch and sits down; Billy lets the bug rattle onto the surface. ‘Not a random encounter?’ 

‘I’d say everyone passes through Alpha eventually, but if Olosuga’s here it’s because he wants something he thinks he can’t get any other way.’ 

‘Saw he left a credchip,’ says Billy mildly. 

Goodnight sighs. ‘He wants a Titanian symbiont.’ Billy raises an eyebrow, silent. ‘Even if I could, you know how hard ASec would come down if they find out.’

‘They’re not necessarily harmful.’ Goodnight lies back: he’s long since ceased to be surprised by Billy’s encyclopaedic grasp of alien physiology. ‘The symbionts like to move around, and they give a sentient host protection in exchange for sharing its experiences. I’ve seen them used to survive in high atmosphere or underwater.’ 

‘And a non-sentient host gets slaved.’ Goody can’t pretend he doesn’t know. ‘Used to be a Prador speciality – core out a prisoner and thrall them with a symbiont, sell them on.’ 

‘Think he’d do that?’ Billy doesn’t sound judgemental, just curious. 

Goodnight turns his gaze away, up through the skylight. ‘Olosuga’s a bastard. It’s not even a choice: he was designed to be a bastard.’ He doesn’t need to add, _like me_; Billy’s heard it before. Starcorps heroes perfectly designed for combat, reflexes tuned for aggression and ruthlessness, left at the end of it all with their victories and commendations, too changed to go home again. 

Some went on fighting, war a mother to them, any war that would have them; some turned their hate inward, testing the true meaning of self-destruction; some wandered away to lose themselves in the outermost reaches of the galaxy where the stars are faint and few; only a rare one or two found a way back, not all the way home, but somewhere that might come to resemble it. Goodnight’s not a good man and he doesn’t always do good, but sometimes he does.

Billy fetches two glasses and comes over to join him, stretching out with feral grace. ‘You going to get one for him?’ 

Goodnight picks up the bottle carefully, the scintillae in the liquid moving sluggishly as he pours two glasses. Trax spirit won’t affect him any more than anything else, but it’s a memory, a memorial, some vestige of personality that he can’t quite let die. ‘Line of least resistance.’ 

‘I could kill him,’ offers Billy. 

Above, a scarf-yacht race scuds across the blackness of the well, minuscule lights towed behind tiny sails. ‘More than I could afford for a job like that.’

When Goodnight first came out of the corps, hands red to the elbows and his reputation a dead weight around his neck, he’d considered the proposition of death. Poisons wouldn’t kill him, or radiation; any injury he could inflict on himself he could survive. Exposure to vacuum? Perhaps, if he floated undetected long enough; maybe if he sat under a plasma engine at blast-off, threw himself into a smelter-compactor mid-cycle. Maybe; the alternative would be ugly. He’d resigned himself, in the end: the day he put his thumb on the screen to authorise the splices was the day his own death was taken from him. Billy could do it, though. They both know: Billy could kill him if Goodnight wanted him to. Would Goodnight love him so, if he couldn’t? 

He tucks a strand of hair behind Billy’s ear and grazes his fingers over his cheek to feel his smile. And as inexplicably as the first time, Billy puts his arms around him, this burnt-out shell of a human, and draws him close, kisses him and puts Goodnight’s hands on his body, while above them the scarf-yachts sparkle like the scintillae in the bottle.

After, Billy hands him his glass and chimes it with his own. ‘So we go shopping for a pet?’ 

Goodnight’s lying back, cradled in the couch, as close to relaxation as he can come. ‘Give him what he wants and he’ll owe me a favour. And that favour will be never coming back.’ 

Billy tilts his head to the vista. ‘Guess that means a trip to the Bleeding Heart.’

\--

Alpha Spaceport’s an imposing sight, its radial arms stretching klicks into the black, studded with docks, big ones for galactic liners and military dreadnoughts, medium-sized ones for starclass cruisers and trader hulks, and row upon row of tiny ones for driveshift couriers, starsail yachts and repurposed atmospheric scouts. Its tubes, walkways and concourses are clean, efficient and streamlined, with cheerful uniformed staff from a diversity of presentable races to channel residents and visitors in and out. And like every port in every station from here to Old Earth, the dirty stuff’s kept well out of sight. 

Behind the gleaming interchange plazas is a warren of engineering clusters, jackyards full of spares and scrap, fuel dumps, storage bays and workers’ hotbunk stacks, its population a barely-organised motley of yard bosses and gangmasters, labourers, grifters and beggars. Billy leads the way, ducking under loops of cable and dodging a spray of chemfuel from a corroding pipe, and Goodnight follows on his heels, cursing volubly. He’s visibly out of place in this grimy environment, stumbling along in his high-heeled boots, jangling with neon and jewellery, and Billy should be more so, incongruously elegant in a well-styled black coverall, his hair elaborately pinned; but wherever he is, Billy strolls as confidently as a tandu among a herd of glavers. 

As they pause to let a stomping powerloader pass Goodnight feels the lightest of brushes against his jacket; Billy’s hand shoots out and clamps shut around the wrist of a skinny kid. ‘Don’t bother,’ he warns. 

The ragged hair and oil-stained overall could hide a girl or a boy, one of a thousand underfed junker rats trying to scrape a living from Alpha’s innards. The kid wriggles free resentfully. ‘Got a quarter-cred?’ 

Goodnight digs in his pocket and flips out a colourless chip; the kid snatches it from the air and darts away with a sneer of ‘Loser.’ 

Billy smiles sideways. ‘Living up to the name?’ 

The Bleeding Heart’s seen better days, that’s what everyone says, though Goodnight’s never met anyone who remembers it any different, not even the Shingouz triad who’ve been holding court at the same corner booth every dek since he arrived. It’s dark, grubby and loud, the same vid always running on a fuzzy loop; the bar’s staffed by a Judoon, surly even by his species’ charmless standards, and today coils of smoke hang in the air above a table of belligerently raucous ore-miners and a pair of halandana bending their long necks over a rubber of morphine. It’s the best place on Alpha to make connections, pick up rumours or recruit for a shady job, and it’s where Goodnight’s best contact can reliably be found on his downside stays. 

They find Vasquez near the back, feet propped up on the table and jaw clamped around a fat Takisian cigar, apparently asleep: of his partner there’s no sign. Like all drifters he wears his wealth on him, platinum discs in his ears and a necklace of vials and datachips under a jacket with flashy metal insets. He cracks one eye open as Billy and Goody pull up chairs. ‘Look what the janthar dragged in.’ 

Goodnight eyes the cigar speculatively. ‘Got any more of those?’ 

Vasquez perks up at once, chair legs thudding down. ‘Eight bales. Twenty creds the quarter-bale, wholesale only.’ 

Goodnight tsks. ‘Never shift them at that price.’ 

Billy signals for a round of bulbs and Vasquez nods courteously to him before turning his attention back to Goodnight. ‘You’re out of the loop. Been a lot more traffic sliding through the yards last dek or so, and where there’s cash in people’s pockets, there’s a profit to be made.’ 

‘What kind of traffic?’ asks Billy curiously. 

Vasquez shrugs. ‘Not my league. It’s the big boys bringing it in, not tramp freighters like me: boat with sixty bays, it doesn’t look so odd if one or two come in dark.’ He rocks his chair back again. ‘So what are you after? Transport?’ 

Goodnight taps a bronze credchip on the table. ‘Not right now.’ 

‘How about a zygomat? Terran antique, one careful owner.’ Faraday’s materialised behind his partner’s shoulder. Unlike his attention-grabbing partner he’s wearing a lived-in undershirt and an overall with a patch which reads _Triggered Thermostellar Devices_; better to blend in, he always claims, look like a mark instead of the con-artist he is, but Goodnight’s always believed that style ranks as low on his list of virtues as honesty. 

Billy narrows his eyes. ‘It work?’ 

‘Not as such,’ admits Faraday easily, ‘wouldn’t take a half-cycle to repair it, tho’, then Alpha would be your Sedrian bivalve.’ His expansive gesture jostles the close-packed tables and the halandana hiss sleepily at him. 

‘They’re not going to buy anything from you,’ scoffs Vasquez. ‘Goody’s too tightfisted and Billy’s got more sense.’ 

Faraday leans over him to grab the bulb, unabashed. ‘Never lose by trying.’ 

Vasquez snorts with laughter. ‘Says the man who lost a spaceship in a game of azad? If I hadn’t taken pity on you you’d still be in Chiark Port.’ 

‘Worked out OK,’ smirks Faraday. He throws one arm round Vasquez’ neck and opens his other hand to show the credchip he’s appropriated. 

Vasquez rolls his eyes. ‘If you don’t want his zygomat or transport off-station no questions asked or a quarter-bale of top-quality Takisian cigars,’ he asks Goodnight patiently, ‘why are you here?’ 

‘I’m in the market for livestock,’ allows Goodnight cautiously. 

Vasquez scratches under his shirt. ‘Think I picked up fleas on Takis.’ 

Faraday kicks him under the table. ‘Baldur sector’s where you want – Wo and Shade will sell you a pair of sandkings. Keep ‘em in a tank and watch ‘em fight.’ 

‘I’m after a Titanian symbiont,’ admits Goodnight. 

Faraday guffaws. ‘Yeah, right, they keep a breeding colony of them behind-‘ 

‘Heard it.’ Billy cuts him off. ‘Someone on the station must be able to get one.’ 

Vasquez looks from Billy to Goodnight and back. ‘You know what they were used for.’ That’s skirting close to the gravity well for him: it’s his cardinal rule never to ask why someone wants something. ‘Not your usual play.’ 

Goodnight shifts uncomfortably under his gaze. ‘Not my usual situation.’ 

Seeing Vasquez look so troubled is worrying: normally the _Mariposa_ will ship any paying cargo on- or off-station, slipping it through the AlphaSec net with a combination of reckless charm and borderline crazy piloting. ‘I’ll ask around, let you know,’ he concedes finally. 

That’s the best he’s going to get: Goodnight stands up. ‘You know where to find me.’ 

‘Night out on the house?’ Faraday’s confidence is irrepressible. ‘Can’t say no to Paradise Alley.’ 

‘Sell that zygomat first, cowboy,’ rumbles Vasquez as they leave.

‘Think we should try Baldur Sector?’ Goodnight asks Billy as they pick their way back towards the droptube transit.

A sparking resyk truck dumps out a hopper of scrap onto a heap as they pass and scavengers dart out to begin sifting through it. ‘Vasquez usually comes through – no point stirring up more attention than we need.’ 

Goodnight ducks hurriedly as one of the diggers flings away a broken catalyzer with a curse. ‘Don’t want to have come out here for nothing.’ 

‘We didn’t,’ Billy tells him smugly. He conjures a datachip into his hand, then palms it and makes it disappear again. 

‘The jackyard rat,’ guesses Goodnight. ‘Little fucker could have showed some gratitude.’


	2. Chapter 2

Ask like mine would take time, I knew that, a half-dek maybe, and meantime it suited me to stay clear of Earth Sector. I had plenty to do solo – a bribe to drop in Proxima Sector, a little tinkering with the third-quadrant waste-flow protocols, and a visit to a qheuen captain who’d developed an unhealthy tendency to gab. 

Couple of times while I was out I got the sense someone was tailing me and I’ve never been wrong about that; what I wanted to know was who’d be dumb enough to try. Goody was closest to a match for me, but I reckoned if he’d found a backbone he’d go straight for a drag-out fight; AlphaSec might have wised up and be taking an interest, but most likely it was personal – can’t collect on promises without breaking a few shells. 

First time I sensed it I hit the droptube straight down to the jackyards – easy to find a reclamation skip there where a corpse won’t make a stir – but my tail must have been too cautious; when I backtracked a little all I saw were the usual junkrats and chancers. 

Couple of cycles later I felt it again, a little shiver like I was being scanned, and this time I took it slow, working my way through the Grand Bazaar like I hadn’t noticed; I paid my way into the Ferenghi pyramid and dodged out through the tellers’ precinct; only way out of there is along the vent pipes where the Different Drummers hang. There was a whole chapter of them clustered round the exchanger, all nodding away in sync to the beat of their implants the creepy way they do; they’re spacey and slow, but a few well-aimed blaster shots was all it took to get them stirred up, and they came at me like a nest of Xantissians. Takes more than Drummers to trouble me, but I reckoned the next few coming through after would be learning the meaning of regret. 

ASec keep a watch on most sector crossing points: can’t get anything in or out without it being monitored. There’s ways round that, clean and dirty, but easiest is always to look for a guard post that’s mostly empty. And I’d found the place: why bother keeping some grunt there when one side of the sector wall’s rich warm oxy-nitro air, and the other an atmosphere of pure hydro-methane with a drizzle of ammonia. The gasbags that live in there keep to themselves, and the maintenance crews would rather send in a droid than risk getting caught with a leak in their helmet. Worked fine for me, though, and I was headed through there as usual when I sensed again I was being watched. 

No one had followed me from the transit station, I knew, but I swept a scan and – – there leaning on a bulkhead with a half-drunk caf-bulb in his hand was a man I recognised, those dark eyes locked on mine. Billy the dancer was dressed star-class elegant in a plain black tunic with his hair sleeked back: no invisi-suit to damp his heat-sig or chameleonware to blend into the background – it was like he’d been there all along, just waiting for me to notice him. 

I didn’t like it, not one bit, but we both knew who’d have the best of a fight: I strode right up close to him, no hesitation. ‘Whatever you want from me, kitten, you won’t be getting it.’ 

‘This is yours,’ he said, and held out a hand; when I didn’t move he dropped the nanomite I’d left at Goody’s glittering onto the ground. 

I leaned into his space, scanning in an overlay: still no mods, no augs. ‘Does Goody know you’ve come out to play?’ 

He didn’t react, just considered his answer like we were having a conversation. ‘I go where I want.’ 

I leaned in so he could feel my strength. ‘Well, you’re welcome to tag along with me if that’s what you’re after. Airlock’s right here.’ He looked at me again like he had when he was dancing, eyes digging down inside like he was trying to know me. Waste of time doing that to a flyboy: the real me was cored out long ago and this is all that’s left. I showed him my teeth. ‘Tell Goody I’ll be around soon.’

I went back to the ‘lock and walked in: as the door closed I added, ‘Did he ever tell you what we did on Nasqueron? Should ask him about it sometime.’ Then the door thumped shut; he stood there watching as the soupy atmosphere began to cycle through, and the look on his face was one I knew, half admiration and half disgust. Been seeing that one since the day I came out of the Starcorps medsuite: baseline humans need breathers and synthsuits for a hydro atmosphere and they need them to be tough because the pressure’s ten times standard. Without them, as the orange wisps licked down, a real human’s throat would have been closing, their lungs burning; the pressure would have had their chest constricting and their ears bleeding, but I just stood there at parade rest as the gas hazed and thickened around me. 

He was still watching when the lock cycled out and the other door popped, though without enhanced vision all he could have seen by then was a dark outline in the murky yellow-brown smog: I gave him the corps salute and headed out into the haze. 

\--

Paradise Alley’s never quiet, even early daycycle: Goodnight’s forcing his way back down the narrow street, shouting his spiel and ignoring the protests as his hovercart stacked with boxes bounces off passers-by. ‘Make way for the array, people – come and see it all at the Glam Club, finest entertainment on the station.’ 

The hovercart runs into the path of a Proximan who teeters dangerously, tail lashing wildly to save themself from overbalancing. ‘Watch thisself, quaddie,’ it snaps. 

Quite what a heavyworlder saurian aims to find on this street is a mystery to Goodnight, but, ‘Glam Club,’ he tells it, ‘free bulb and jellies for first-timers.’ 

‘Poor jape,’ gripes the Proximan: they both know its bulky body would never fit through the door. 

He forges on, past a peacock dream-girl fanning her tail enticingly and a looming Synthian priest expounding the heresy of the Embrace of Tides, until he finally comes in sight of his own doorstep. It’s occupied by a tall dark-skinned man in a heavy, many-pocketed coat wearing an octo-familiar in a faded orange around his neck, its spiralling arms waving delicate suckered ends; he’s accompanied by a woman with red hair in a badly-fitting catgirl outfit and shoes she seems to have borrowed from someone else. 

Goody tilts his hat back with an exaggerated air of irritation. ‘Glam Club ain’t hiring.’ He looks the pair of them up and down, noting the way the woman flinches. 

‘Now come on, Goody,’ whines the man. ‘I know you’re the discerning type – this one has hidden talents.’ 

Goodnight pitches his voice to carry. ‘If I had a quarter-cred for every time I’d heard that I’d own my own orbital by now.’ One of the familiar’s tentacles comes questing over his collar and he bats it away. ‘Take a hike to the resyk.’ 

The man takes his companion’s arm. ‘Ten splits of your time and we’ll show you. Personal audition.’ 

Goodnight gives the woman his best creepy smile for the benefit of the onlookers, impressed with the glare he gets in return. ‘She’d have to be better than she looks.’ 

He sets the sixclone to unstacking the cart and heaving in the boxes while he ushers his new companions through to a booth the back of the club. He dials the room to private and calls up the specs to be sure while the man politely guides his charge to a seat. ‘Said it before and I’ll say it again, this place could do with a side entrance.’

‘Block’s too packed,’ Goodnight tells him absently, ‘most expensive cubic metrage in the sector.’ He straightens up and takes off his shades. ‘You look ridiculous.’ 

‘Says the man wearing a Hooper jacket like it’s 2680 all over again.’ Sam shrugs off his coat and plonks the familiar down on the table where it immediately starts to ooze sideways. 

Goodnight eyes it with distaste. ‘If you leave it there it’ll just crawl onto the floor and trail round in the spillage.’ 

‘Won’t hurt the disguise any.’ The woman’s looking between them, suspicion and discomfort clear on her face; Sam pats her shoulder. ‘This will only be for a dek or two, Citizen Cullen. If we keep you in AlphaSec protection Commissioner Bogue will have his lawyers on us within a cycle. Goody’s an old friend of mine.’ The smile he gives Goodnight is warm. 

She looks from one to the other. ‘Exactly how did an AlphaSec captain and a Paradise Alley pimp get to be “old friends”?’ 

Sharp, but Goodnight can see the courage that’s the only thing holding her together. ‘Not the way you’d suppose,’ he winks. 

Vagrant Starcorps marines aren’t welcome on the station: they’re not welcome anywhere. He’d washed up on Alpha by accident, stumbling off a freighter out of credit on a fake ID, aiming to slide under the radar long enough to find a ship out again, anywhere, but his luck, as usual, was out. He didn’t start the fight, jumped by gangers out the back of a zorb joint, but the survivors made it out that way and it would have gone badly for him if he hadn’t found in Sam Chisolm the first sympathy and understanding he’d seen in half a lifetime. He’ll always be grateful to him for riding to his rescue; ‘War’s over if you want it to be,’ he’d said, and he’d found him a place to stay and thrown his AlphaSec weight into burying his past. And in return the Glam Club does occasional favours when it happens that Security’s left hand doesn’t need to know what the right is doing. _There’s rules_, Sam always says, _and then there’s the application of rules_. 

Now Goodnight takes pity on Citizen Cullen. ‘Glam Club’s a pleasure palace. Everyone comes to the Alley looking to get high or low and satisfied, and we relieve them of their credits, but no one works here who doesn’t want, and those that do I pay fair. You need to stay off-circuit for a while, you can work the weapons check or the bar – plenty of scut work to keep the place running.’ 

Citizen Cullen sniffs disdainfully. ‘There certainly is. Doesn’t look to me that it’s seen a cleaning bot since your outfit was in fashion. Whole place needs to be irradiated.’ 

Goodnight grins delightedly. ‘Treat our customers like that and we can market you as a speciality service.’ 

Citizen Cullen scowls at him. ‘And I’ll need something else to wear: right now I look as convincing as a hoon in a hula skirt.’ 

She’s not wrong, and Sam snickers as Goodnight cracks the door and summons the aqua-tattooed girl. ‘C’mell, this is…’ 

Citizen Cullen juts her chin defiantly. ‘Rose.’ 

‘Show her round, and see if you can find some boots to fit her.’

Once ‘Rose’ is out of earshot Sam leans closer. ‘Material witness in the Bogue case – if she can stay alive and on-station to testify. Can you do that?’ 

Goodnight smiles thinly. ‘A pleasure for me and for Billy.’ 

Sam sits back again, concentrating on the bulb in front of him. ‘On a completely unconnected topic, Bucephalus was found a cycle ago, drowned in his private jelly tank. Heard anything about that?’ 

‘The Tauren boss?’ Goody keeps his gaze steady. ‘Probably weighed down by all that platinum he had his child slaves strip-mine out of the Kalimdor Cluster.’ 

Sam’s smile is brief and mirthless. ‘Seems to be the prevailing theory.’ He corrals the octo-familiar which is straying determinedly towards the table edge. ‘One other thing – is the _Mariposa_ on-station, do you know?’ 

‘Think so.’ Goodnight tries not to sound guarded: Sam might be willing to cover up his presence on Alpha, but there’s no need for him to know he’s been attracting old associates. 

Sam nods. ‘Could do with talking to Vasquez, if you could broker it.’ 

‘Take a couple of cycles.’ Goodnight hopes he doesn’t look as shifty as he feels: with any luck they can conclude their business first, and if Sam is sitting down with a known smuggler he won’t be in a position to ask too many questions. ‘Think there’s something unusual going on?’ 

Sam takes a squirt of his bulb. ‘What’s _usual_? There’s an outbreak of plastiphage nanobots in Nojima sector, the Omelite mechas are campaigning for recognition as full citizens, suspected sabotage at the central resyk facility – that wasn’t pretty, I can tell you, formal complaints from some hydro-breathers about unwarranted incursions into their habitat – and everything else from scarf-yacht race-fixing syndicates to rumours of a possible multi-zone grav-plate malfunction in the inner quadrant. The whole vast tapestry that makes policing Alpha Station what it is.’ 

The octo-familiar finally falls off the tabletop with a splat to punctuate his words. ‘And a corrupt mining corps boss to bring to justice.’ Goodnight scoops up the orange familiar fastidiously. ‘Don’t let it wander off: Citizen Cullen will put it in the recycler.’

\---

Sam stays a while to help reset the laser array to the accompaniment of ferocious clattering and the sparking complaints of an overloaded cleaning droid; after he’s gone Goodnight resumes his post outside to drum up custom and keep an eye out for Billy. He’s lured in three newly-landed tourship marks and traded insults with a passing glitterstim dealer before Billy comes sauntering along the Alley: his graceful stroll would fool most observers, but in Goodnight’s overlay it’s plain he’s injured. He lets him pass with a nod, gives it ten splits, then climbs the ladder to find him.

Billy’s just out of the refresher and setting out medsupplies: there’s fresh bruising down one side of his torso and a nasty gash on his shoulder. ‘Let me,’ offers Goodnight, shedding hat and shades; he sanitises his hands, then deftly sprays on repair film and runs the subdermal healer over Billy’s side. 

Beside the kit is a scatter of gold and platinum credchips from which he averts his gaze. Billy rarely shares details of the jobs he takes on: he’ll disappear for a cycle or two, occasionally a dek or more, then reappear, self-contained as ever, as though dancing is his only business. What keeps him here? Goodnight guesses he appreciates the churning anonymity of the Alley, finds the cover useful; in his better moments he’s willing to believe some of the reason is personal.

‘Sam was here,’ he tells Billy. ‘Brought us a witness to keep out of harm’s way.’ 

‘Not great timing.’ Billy’s deft as ever, packing the medkit away, but he seems distracted. 

‘Couldn’t say no. And Faraday pinged me. Wants to meet on the _Mariposa_ tomorrow.’

‘I saw him,’ says Billy abruptly. ‘Olosuga.’ He works his shoulder, testing it. ‘Coming out of a qheuen cargo depot; he was reeking with fear-spray.’ 

‘Getting his hands dirty?’ That’s hardly a surprise, but Billy seems uncharacteristically troubled. 

‘He’s hiding out in one of the gasplanet sectors.’ 

Goodnight closes his eyes, seeing again the orange-brown cloudtops roiling under his feet and the blooms of photon cannon strikes as the drop-ship plummets into the crushing gravity. ‘Which one?’ 

‘Meseriphine Sector,’ says Billy. The name means nothing to Goodnight, and he’s relieved. ‘Belongs to the oerileithe. They’re cloud-dwellers, long-lifers.’ 

Goodnight frowns, puzzled. ‘What use would a Titanian symbiont be to them?’ 

Billy gets up to stow the medkit and pull out fresh clothes. ‘Doubt they know much about it. They’re not as slow as some, they’ll talk to quick species, but they don’t engage much with oxy-civilisations. My hunch is it’s just Olosuga’s bolt-hole – he made a show for me of being able to stand the atmosphere.’ 

Something in Goodnight’s gut squirms at the thought of Billy seeing that, but there’s a bigger issue first. ‘You let him see you?’ 

Billy’s smile is razor-edged. ‘The longer he goes on thinking I’m just your errand-boy the better.’ 

Before Goodnight can say more there’s a crash and a shout from down below; he sighs. ‘Hygiene’s a curse.’ He retrieves his hat and shades. ‘Be onstage for your fans later?’ Billy waves a hand over his torso in answer: his bruises are already starting to fade.

\--

The _Mariposa_ couldn’t be more ill-named; she’s a chunky wedge of a freighter, bottom-heavy with cargo bays and a heavy lifting rig, the control suite on top an asymmetric afterthought. On her hull a faded Jupiter Mining Conglomerate logo is barely visible under the scrapes and dents of encounters with space junk and rapid atmospheric exits. She’s currently sitting at the end of one of the portside radials, her loading ramp open; a discordant clanging echoes from inside. Goodnight catches Billy’s questioning glance and shrugs, then leads the way into the hold. 

There’s a strong scent of tobacco and under it a chemical tang that’s almost certainly soma; Faraday is squatting next to an ancient-looking droid, poking in its access panel with a thin probe. ‘Don’t get too close,’ he warns, ‘damn thing’s got a mind of its own.’ As though it’s heard the bot extends a stubby shocktube and spins around; Faraday yelps as it zaps his leg. 

‘Looks like an old security droid,’ observes Billy.

‘Won it from some old-time rim-runner in the Heart,’ Faraday tells them gloomily. ‘Said it just needed a new command matrix, but I think I’ve been played for a planetsider on this one.’ 

‘That the only business you’ve been transacting recently?’ prompts Goody. 

Faraday snaps the droid’s panel shut and stands up; he aims a kick at it but the droid rolls nimbly out of reach. ‘C’mon through.’ 

He takes them up the companionway into the ship proper, to a small but surprisingly well-appointed passenger lounge. It’s always a surprise to Goodnight that the inside of the freighter is so respectable, but Vasquez makes a point of taking legitimate passengers where he can to keep in good standing with the port authorities. 

A grey box is sitting on the table; Faraday locks the door, then keys in the combination code. The case opens to reveal a transparent biorb which he takes out and sets carefully on the surface. ‘Here you go. Ugly critter, if you ask me.’ 

Goodnight peers into the sphere: among a tangle of scarlet vegetation is a grey six-legged armoured creature clinging to a branch. ‘That’s a Titanian symbiont?’ He taps the orb dubiously and recoils as the creature skitters suddenly towards him, its sting curling. 

‘No.’ Billy turns a suspicious look on Faraday. ‘It’s a Cathadayn tree-scorpion. I’ve seen them used once or twice. The venom’s deadly to most species, once it’s locked onto a heat-signature it’s single-minded, and it’s virtually impossible to kill.’ 

‘Must have reminded me of someone I know,’ deadpans Faraday. ‘No, Sha– ah—our associate who came up with it, they said the symbiont’s fused with it: you can see it under the armour if you look close.’ 

Billy squats to scrutinise it, then straightens with a nod to Goodnight. ‘It’s there. They transfer from host to host quite easily.’ 

Goodnight admires his sang-froid. ‘If this one’s so poisonous how do we…’ he begins, but Billy smiles sardonically. ‘We don’t. I’m happy for it to be our associate’s problem.’

Faraday picks the biorb up and returns it to the case. ‘You can pay me now.’ 

Goodnight snorts. ‘I look like a glaver calf to you? Where’s Vas?’ 

‘Wasn’t him did the leg work,’ complains Faraday. ‘He went out, trouble first thing made him jumpy.’

‘Trouble?’ Billy sits down on one of the couches and Faraday throws himself down opposite. 

‘Didn’t it get onto the flashes? Whole radial was swarming with ASec, and that always makes him edgy.’ 

‘Justifiably,’ Goodnight points out; Faraday bristles. ‘Nothing to do with us – some big ship just in from Newholme. Bunch of qheuen were moving their cargo through, and turned out there was some creature in one of their pressurised tanks, started battering away at the sides and shrieking.’ 

‘Qheuen?’ Billy’s silent glance sets a cold bead of suspicion is rattling in Goodnight’s head. 

Faraday nods. ‘Crew were all skittering and spraying like they do, could tell they were swearing up and down they didn’t know jack about it, but ASec took them in anyway.’ 

Billy leans closer, eyes narrow. ‘Anyone say what the stowaway was?’ 

Faraday shrugs. ‘Heard someone talking about limacs? Limma-somethings?’

‘Limacoforms.’ Billy’s looking worried, and that’s enough in itself to make Goodnight’s gut plummet. ‘Slugs,’ he explains. 

Faraday guffaws. ‘Must have been a damn big slug, racket it was making. You can wait for Vas to come back if you want.’ He pulls open a locker. ‘Drink?’

In normal circumstances the assortment of murky polyplas containers would be less than appealing, but right now Goodnight reaches eagerly for the mug that Faraday fills from what looks suspiciously like a reused fuel can. The liquor tastes even worse than it looks, but the harsh bite is at least distracting; Billy downs his with a hiss and holds out his mug for a refill. Faraday cackles. ‘Thought you had standards.’

Three rounds and a rambling story about the zygomat later Vasquez still hasn’t shown: Goodnight stands up and reaches for the case with the best grin he can muster. ‘Tell him to find me at the club for the credits. Show’s on the house.’

He and Billy walk back through the port in silence except for the faint scrape of the scorpion inside its container; only when they’re alone in the droptube does Billy says quietly, ‘Olosuga’s in thick with the qheuen, we know that.’ 

‘And he’s hiding out in a hydro sector.’ The sinking feeling increases as Goodnight fishes for the memory. ‘Sam said something about incursions.’ 

Billy pauses, as though unwilling to voice his thoughts. ‘You know what it could have been.’

‘They’re contained.’ Goodnight tries to sound convinced. ‘Never been let off Nifandel.’

Though they’re rarely encountered except by strong-stomached xenoanthropologists in search of a career opportunity, everyone’s heard of the Nifandelian Porsa. Voracious and foulmouthed mucusoids, completely undiscriminating in their appetite for anything organic and devoid of anything which could remotely be called a culture: the successive races which ventured down to their home planet had collectively recoiled in disgust and agreed that the Porsa were best excluded from galactic society.

‘They are. They should be. But…’ He frowns. ‘Porsa on Alpha’s not anyone’s idea of good, but they could stay in the gasplanet sectors, scavenge the lowest levels: most of the species there are too big and distant to notice. And they’d still be contained.’

‘But if they were joined with a-‘

Billy flicks a warning hand as they emerge onto the concourse and Goodnight falls silent, working it out. A symbiont would let the Porsa adapt their physiology, breathe any atmosphere, tolerate any pressure. It would open Alpha to them, life in all its galactic variety, a thousand habitats, a million sentient races, and all of them edible. For once he’s grateful for the modifications that let him control his reactions, so he can swagger and joke his way down the Alley like the trashboy pimp he’s made himself, the case a dead weight in his hand.

Back in his room above the club Billy sets the case on the worktable where it stands between them like an accusation. ‘He’s made us part of this.’

‘I know.’ Goodnight lays down his hat, strips out of his jacket and goes to lie down on the couch, staring up into the station’s heart. He can count the sectors stacked one above the other like shining bubbles, the intricate fabric of habitats and species, more various and more complex than anywhere else in the universe.

‘Why would he do it?’

Goodnight coughs a laugh. ‘Because he doesn’t care. Because he wants revenge on all of it. Because he’ll see the galaxy burn and walk away. I was like that, until I met you.’


	3. Chapter 3

Long ago, as a whim of some mediaplex heir or retired conglomerate zillionaire, a spherical arcology was brought to Alpha, towed in and tethered high over Terra Sector. Those wealthy enough to enter found its curving walls lined with manicured lawns, flowing streams and woodlands of carefully-selected trees; delicate herbivores drifted in little herds and clouds of long-tailed birds fluttered under a bright solstrip. For as long as the credit lasted it was a luxurious retreat, an escape for the privileged few, but in time its owner lost interest or the money ran out, maintenance ceased, and the artificial ecology was abandoned, its plants and animals left to fend for themselves. 

Some failed and died, overwhelmed by the increasingly erratic environment, but many found the means to adapt to the fragmenting ecosystem: in place of the neat woodlands grew tangled forests of creeping vines and spined tree-ferns, able to shoot up three feet in a cycle when the solstrip flickered to sudden brightness, falling dormant again when it guttered low; instead of smooth turf fields of phosphorescent fungi bloomed in drought or endless downpour. And among them the introduced species and opportunistic newcomers found themselves new niches to exploit: scale-winged insects and predatory plants, skittering reptiles with poison-tipped barbs and vast-eyed night-hunting birds. 

It’s Billy’s favourite place on the station, an object lesson in life’s determination to survive in the most unpromising circumstances. He’s come here alone to think, stretched full-length on a patch of red moss under a cluster of hanging flytraps. Olosuga’s a problem, the symbiont’s a problem, and the Porsa, if they’re what he’s mixed up with, are the biggest problem of all. 

Alpha Station’s accommodating, that’s its nature – a beacon of galactic culture and cooperation where every sentient race is welcome. Occupying a sector on Alpha is the hallmark of a developed civilisation: even Xantissians and Hissho maintain a token foothold here, suppressing their natural aggression for the sake of advancement. But the Porsa? There’s no accommodating to them.

Too disgusting to have natural predators, cheerfully contemptuous of every species they meet, the Porsa know only one way of interacting. Live or dead, fresh or putrid, they’ll engulf and digest anything they encounter, and when that’s done they’ll turn on each other. Only the hardiest and rashest of voyagers would visit Nifandel, but Billy’s heard the stories, seen the shaky vid footage: the observer platform ringed with sensors and defence nets, overrun in a matter of hours; the grainy brown blobs on the screen crushing and consuming everything in their path; the handful of survivors sacrificing themselves rather than allow the slugs to reach their ship. Uniting them with Titanian symbionts would let them come writhing and sliming out of their high-pressure atmosphere, laying open Alpha’s thousand habitats and everything living in them. He doesn’t want to imagine it, the shapeless bodies packed against a sector wall, yearning with greed, pouring out of the airlocks to engulf everything in their path. Billy’s no respecter of life for its own sake, but he’d draw the line at that, any sane entity would. 

Above his head a flytrap blooms, pink and sticky; a many-legged insect comes picking down a vine on threadlike feet, attracted by the oozing sugar. It stops, reaching out its feelers, tentative. 

Billy doesn’t have a planet of his own. He’s not a Neovadan, an Emereli or a Celian; he’s not from the farmworlds or the orbitals or beyond the Veil. People look at him – elegant, controlled, distant – and peg him as a coreworlder, a Newholmer, maybe, but the truth is more mundane: he was shipborn, growing up in the spaces in between. Sometimes he thinks that death was all he ever knew, his cradle the unsparing vacuum of space, his playground lit by long burnt-out stars, and that’s why death has become his home. 

It’s a big universe and there’s a lot to learn, but Billy’s a specialist in what it takes to kill, a student of death in its myriad forms. Some species have multiple weaknesses, absurdly sensitive to atmospheric composition and pressure, to physical trauma, poisons and dehydration. Some are hardier, but still vulnerable to extremes of temperature, to hard vacuum or radiation. A few are specialised – weak only to a blow on a particular nerve cluster hidden under an armoured plate, to a certain frequency of sound or a combination of salts ingested in precise proportions – and those he appreciates with a connoisseur’s discrimination. Death has a thousand forms and Billy knows them all.

He lies back, hands behind his head, watching the insect start and drawback, torn between caution and hunger. Alpha was never part of the plan. He didn’t come here to settle, and he didn’t end up at the Glam Club to stay. A few deks’ cover, a convenient hideout, an appreciative audience for his skills – it’s been longer than he intended, a lot longer, dancing in a third-rate club with a dodgy laser array and overpriced drinks, but he didn’t expect to find what he did. He’d thought he had the measure of this Robicheaux, just another blustering pimp out to claw a living, all surface and show, but what he found was infinitely more complex. Humans are one of his least taxing subjects, weak in so many ways – but not Goodnight. Reinforced with alien genesplicing, his senses, reactions and strength enhanced, Starcorps marines are engineered to be resistant to death. 

Yet Goody struggles so hard to be alive, clinging to the remnant of his humanity, trying to prove to himself that he’s more than a weapon. He never left the war behind, no flyboy ever did, but he’s taken the struggle and made it his own. No one in Paradise Alley makes a living by moral probity, but Goodnight does good like a drowning man gasping for air. He’ll say this is his problem, his fight, but it doesn’t have to be.

The insect seems to make up its mind, unfurling its proboscis as it inches closer to the tempting sap. The two of them are implicated, no doubt of that, but is one symbiont really going to make that much difference? Olosuga seems to think so – can he replicate it, clone it somehow? Billy tallies potential courses of action, dispassionate. Get rid of it, ask Vasquez to cycle it out into space? That won’t stop Olosuga trying again, and he’s not likely to leave Goody alone. Call in AlphaSec? They’d deal with the Porsa, but if it comes out that Goody’s been dealing in symbionts even Sam won’t be able to save him. 

Boldly the insect plants a foot on one fleshy petal– and the flytrap snaps shut, clamped on its struggling body. There is a way, an obvious one. He can make it work. Before the plant can begin to digest at leisure a bird darts from cover in a flash of blue and yellow, its sharp-toothed beak tearing trap and insect together from the stem. It gulps them down, watching Billy with an unblinking eye. ‘There’s always more going on than you think,’ he tells it.

\--

Two cycles later Billy is waiting, half-hidden behind a gas exchange housing, in the noplace where four sectors meet. All around huge polyglass walls arc gently upwards, this interstice reserved for the mundane activity of waste processing, dotted with clusters of reclamation domes and settling tanks. The air is oily and thick, an organic stew; he draws it in deep and lets the tang spread across his palate. Olosuga will show sooner or later, Billy’s certain: he’s careful to vary his routes, but he favours unmonitored airlocks and this is the least frequented of all. Billy’s practised at stillness, but he’s hyper-aware of his physical state – the prickle of heat and the beginnings of thirst, the tension in his muscles and the quiver of anticipation. Ahead of him, through the translucent wall, swirls the orange haze of Meseriphine Sector; it must be imagination, but as he peers through the smog shapes seem to slither and ooze at the limits of vision.

A stab of alarm alerts him just before he senses the approaching presence at his back; it takes all his discipline to stay relaxed, apparently oblivious, until the snout of a blaster touches cold at the nape of his neck. ‘Once is coincidence,’ Olosuga growls softly in his ear, ‘twice is provocation.’ 

Billy holds up his hands, movements slow. ‘Things have changed. We heard—‘ 

‘I know what you heard.’ Olosuga takes a step back, waiting for Billy to turn and face him. ‘That trouble in the port got out, and now Goody wants to know what he’s got into.’ He flicks the blaster, motioning Billy towards the airlock. ‘Why don’t you come and find out?’

The airlock here is barely more than a maintenance access with flimsy service-workers’ synthsuits stacked beside it in a hatch; Olosuga waits impatiently while Billy climbs into one, checking the seals and settling the helmet collar carefully around his neck. Before he’s fully suited Olosuga taps the pad and the air begins to cycle out; Billy has to scramble to raise and lock the helmet over his head as yellow-brown wisps sink down from above, his suit inflating to cushion the growing pressure. 

Inside the sector the light is dull and orange, visibility low. A few wan neon strips are strung across a flat and featureless landscape punctuated by occasional hangar-like one-storey buildings. The surface is an alien concept to gasplanet species, Billy knows: all that’s at floor level is infrastructure for the habitat – grav-plate housings and osmosis interchangers, waste pumps and ducts – and a few pressured halls where the oerileithe can conduct their rare formal interactions with oxy-based delegations. The true life of the sector is all above them, invisible from here: floating habitats and platforms, agri-mods and nurseries, masses of aerial vegetation and cloud-skimming creatures, and the vast wandering arenas where the air-dwellers hold their conclaves and entertainments. 

It’s a strange thing to see a human striding along freely in this hostile place; in his inflated suit Billy feels stiff-limbed and lumbering. Olosuga leads them inwards, away from the sector boundary, and further than an access-worker’s synthsuit is designed to go: each scrape and rustle of the fabric that wraps him is loud in Billy’s ears. 

Olosuga watches scornfully as Billy scans around. ‘All new to you, kitten? Now Goody and me, we did some of our best work on gasbag planets. Straight down into the cloud layers with photon cannons and anti-matter missiles: left the whole system scoured clean.’ 

‘Genocide.’ Billy keeps his tone neutral. ‘Goody’s told me about his past.’ 

‘Now that’s his mistake.’ Olosuga’s smile has no humour in it. ‘Thinking it’s past.’

Finally they come to a low hangar at the foot of twin ducts which tower up to vanish into the haze; it seems to be some kind of monitoring station, lit faintly from within. The panel beside the door is flashing an error message and Olosuga has to haul it open manually. Inside a platform runs around four walls lined with flickering readout displays; pipes snake across the ceiling, though at the far end one has cracked, letting a thin trickle of sludge run down into the recessed floor behind a metal rail. The air is still, but an odd clicking susurration echoes in Billy’s helmet. Olosuga strides forward to the rail and leans over, leaving Billy to step up to his side. 

He’s lived on Alpha long enough to think he’s inured to strangeness: his days of gawking at a twin-headed Su-suheris or a vermiform Priapulin are long gone. Still, there’s something atavistically nauseating about the two creatures scuffling at the edge of the oily pool in the tiled recess below – sacks of grey-brown flesh more than twice his size, slick with mucus, their glistening bodies billowing and contracting. Eyestalks swivel as they catch the new scent, and they come undulating over in a flurry of clicks and hisses, mouthparts unfurling in a drool of slime. Olosuga’s savouring his reaction. ‘Want to know what they’re saying?’ He doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Coming to you, stinking pusbag! Mine, filth, mine! Burst it, meat-sack, swallow it down!’ 

In their enthusiasm the creatures rear up, revealing a ridged underfoot and try to slither up the tiled wall, feelers questing; Billy takes a step back, fighting down revulsion. They’re everything he’s heard and more: he can only be grateful that they helmet spares him their stench. ‘Keep them hungry?’ 

Olosuga watches them with calm detachment. ‘Porsa are always hungry. They’re brighter than you’d think, but they’re basically just sacks of guts and appetite. Gotta admire them.’ He laughs at Billy’s expression. ‘Look.’ He takes out the blaster, adjusts the dial and aims: a line of red light slices into the rear end of the nearest Porsa. It shrieks in protest, writhing on the tiled floor, but Olosuga, indifferent to its distress, goes on cutting deep into its quivering flesh until he’s sliced it in two. 

The cut-off section contracts into a ball and sits shuddering and oozing; then, as Billy watches, it slowly extends itself again, a sense-cluster forming at one end and an underfoot below, until a third smaller Porsa shakes itself and goes shuffling off towards the pool of sludge, sucking it down in slurping gulps. The original Porsa, meanwhile, has already recovered from the amputation and reformed its truncated body; it resumes its energetic swipes at the prey that dangles so tantalisingly out of reach. 

‘See why I like ‘em?’ Olosuga’s hand shoots out to grab Billy’s arm, his grip strong enough to make his bones creak from the force; struggling against it is pointless. Alarm and panic stab through him, disorienting, and Billy goes down to one knee, perilously close to the lip of the platform. He grabs at the upright of the railing: Olosuga will throw him to the Porsa sooner or later, no doubt of that, but has his plan misfired? ‘There.’ A metal tie snaps over his wrist, cuffing him to the post, and Olosuga pats his shoulder. ‘You can keep ‘em company while I talk to Goody.’

Billy can’t see the interface screen, but he hears Goody’s answer against a background of music and shouting: ‘Glam Club, where your pleasure is our –‘ He cuts off at what he sees. 

‘Pleasure’s all mine, Goody.’ From his tone Olosuga’s enjoying this. ‘Want to try my kind of entertainment?’ He must step aside, putting Billy in the frame. ‘Star attraction’s here already.’ Billy raises a hand, drawing another round of frustrated hisses from below. 

‘Tell me where.’ Goody sounds different, clipped and impersonal as he takes Olosuga’s directions. 

‘Bring what you got from that gungan smuggler, and if I haven’t got bored we can trade.’ 

It seems a long wait: all Billy can do is sit, uncomfortably aware of the small gap between his feet and the upstretched maws of the Porsa slithering tirelessly back and forth below. ‘Synthsuit might buy you some time.’ The voice comes from somewhere behind him, deliberately out of Billy’s range of vision. ‘Could even stay alive in there for a while till they digest through it. But once they’re in they say it’s quick.’ 

Certainly the new Porsa has grown visibly even in so short a time and joined the others in straining to reach him, though fortunately they seem to lack the focus to co-operate, battling angrily among themselves whenever they encroach on each other’s space. Billy keeps his attention on them, but he’s pricklingly aware of Olosuga somewhere behind him, waiting with a predator’s stillness.

At last the door opens and boot heels come thudding across the floor; Goody must take in the situation at a glance because he circles round the platform to draw Olosuga back into Billy’s line of sight. He didn’t expect Goody to be wearing a synthsuit, but even so there’s something shocking about seeing him in his neon-green jacket and rattling jewellery, his true nature laid bare as he breathes the crushing methane atmosphere as easily as if he were still in the Alley. 

Goody drops the grey box at Olosuga’s feet. ‘There’s your trade.’ 

Olosuga kicks it. ‘Didn’t come out of the tank yesterday. Open it up.’ Goody presses a finger to the lock and the lid slides open to reveal the biorb; Olosuga hisses through his teeth like a halandana. ‘That’s the host?’ 

‘That a problem?’ challenges Goody. 

Olosuga grins wide. ‘Not for me.’ He picks the biorb out one-handed, the scorpion skittering inside, and moves to the rail. ‘Just one. Bet you were thinking that. How much harm can one symbiont do?’ 

He draws back his arm and launches the orb into the air; Goody steps up beside him, face twisting at the sight that greets him, the Porsa rippling eagerly upwards, their eyestalks turning. There’s no need for a translation for the flurry of clicks as they battle for the biorb, rolling and shoving; finally the largest of them manages to snatch it and engulfs it triumphantly. Its flesh contracts and dilates, then it convulses and coughs out the broken fragments of the orb. 

‘Like I said, just bags of guts.’ Olosuga reaches for the blaster at his hip again; Billy’s prepared for what’s going to happen next, but Goody takes a reflexive step to shield him. Olosuga snorts: his first cut neatly decapitates the victorious Porsa, and its companions fall on the tumbling flesh with cries of glee. Billy can understand Goody’s choke of revulsion, but Olosuga begins cutting methodically back and forth, slicing its body into glistening chunks. Some are engulfed straight away, but the others, still smoking, blob up into life and begin a scuffling race to the slurry pool. It has a disgusting simplicity to it, Billy supposes.

Olosuga pockets the blaster. ‘Soon have an army.’ His grin is merciless. ‘Thanks to you.’ 

‘You’ve sunk pretty low.’ Goody turns his back on the spectacle below. ‘Anything for a war, huh?’ 

Olosuga looks him up and down contemptuously. ‘I ain’t the one pretending to be something I’m not.’ He strides to one of the wall displays, hands flickering over the screen. ‘War’s what they made us for, and it’s over when I say it is.’ 

A vibration starts somewhere under their feet and on the far side of the recess a circular hatch begins to iris open in the wall. The Porsa scramble impatiently until it’s wide enough, then go sliming eagerly through. ‘Leads straight to the waste overspill. Once they’ve filled up there, Alpha’s going to be like a rotten fruit for them.’ The hiver’s grin is back on his face. ‘You can stay and watch. Or you could probably still run,’ Olosuga tells Goody. ‘Might even make it out.’ 

Billy has to fight against the panic that washes through him; he struggles futilely against his cuff, the metal rattling. ‘Trade,’ Goody orders flatly. 

‘Your pet? Only had to ask.’ Olosuga strides over and sets his thumb to the cuff: it splits apart and Billy uses the railing to haul himself to his feet, Olosuga grabbing a fistful of his suit to help. But as Billy takes a step away his grip on the synthsuit tightens, twisting and pulling, and the cheap plasteen ruptures apart. The squeeze of pressure is like a vice on his chest as the suit deflates and acrid air comes rushing in to sear his eyes and nose. He chokes on the first breath, fighting a deep-rooted terror as his throat closes; when Olosuga releases his grip Billy drops to his knees, hands at his throat. ‘Can’t go getting too attached to humans.’

Billy doesn’t have to feign distress – it’s impossible not to gasp and struggle as his lungs fill with poison – but the symbiont clamped at his neck reaches out to calm him as it processes the gases for him, projecting a sense of pleasure at protecting its new host. He curls into himself, shivering, trying to process the rush of sensations: the cold chemical bite of the air in his throat, and the fetid stench behind it, the dizzying nakedness of being unsuited and the strange underwater feeling of breathing without breath. 

Goody’s voice is low. ‘You made a mistake, coming to Alpha.’ Billy’s greatest anxiety had been whether Goody could make his act convincing, whether he could crack his carefully-constructed shell and drag out the persona he’s tried so hard to forget, but now standing here in Goody’s trashy outfit is a man he’s never met, a Starcorps marine, menacingly still. 

There’s eagerness in Olosuga’s expression. ‘Knew it was all still there. Going to show me you remember?’ Goody bares his teeth, and it’s unnerving, to see them two of a kind.

He’s never seen Goody fight: from what he knows of the Starcorps legend – a cadre of ruthless soldiers genetically enhanced for strength and reflexes, impervious to pain or damage – he expects a frenzy of violence, a merciless flaying to exploit any weakness, like a battle among Prador firstchildren. But what unfolds before him is far stranger: the blows they trade are precise and vicious, hard enough to shatter bone, flesh bruises and breaks, but that’s merely surface, devoid of meaning. The true fight, flashes faster than he can see in the eye and the mind, attacks predicted and deflected before they can gather force, advantage gained and lost in a passing second. Their motions shift oddly as though stuttering through reality; Goody’s hinted at that, at a multi-dimensional sensorium, at steps from _here_ to _there_ where no path should be. It’s a contest too obscure for Billy to understand, his vision too small a part of the whole for him to parse it, but clear on Goody’s face, under the laser focus, is a savage joy as he does what he was created to do.

They circle, feint and lunge in a complex dance, and with each swell and ebb of motion Olosuga steps closer to where Billy lies, holding himself still in the slender hope of surprise. The symbiont shivers, anxious, but he wills his muscles to relaxation; he has to make this chance count. Olosuga steps into Goody’s jab, but even as the impact rocks him he snaps Goody’s head around with a skull-crushing punch – then as Olosuga’s weight shifts Billy’s hand shoots out to bury a ceramic blade in his calf. 

‘You fuck!’ It’s a weak distraction at best, but the cascade of implications Billy’s action carries throws Olosuga for a critical second, enough for Goody to land a clinical stab under his ear. Olosuga staggers, turning on Billy with a kick to the stomach, swift and brutal, that has him seeing stars. ‘Should have fed you to ‘em right off.’ 

Goody dives in to send them rolling in a blur of motion: it buys Billy time to recover, the symbiont soothing him with a wave of blissful numbness, and he heaves to his feet, palming out another blade. If Goody’s fight is a dance, fluid and intense, what he has to offer is barely worthy of the name, a crude parody of ill-timed slashes and desperate parries; just one of Olosuga’s cracking blows would be enough to finish him. 

Alone, for all his strength and grace, he’d occupy Olosuga for less than a handful of seconds. Alone, Goody makes a more formidable opponent, but Billy thinks he can see it, how Olosuga leans into the fight, wills himself through it to make each opportunity weigh on his side a fraction more. Together, though – together he and Goody form a pattern that’s uncalibrated, forcing Olosuga to fight in two modes at once, his shifts in focus creating a minute but cumulative lag. 

Goody and Olosuga sense it at the same time, alert to the change in pressure or an imperceptible vibration: Billy sees them stiffen and follows their glance to the outflow pipe and the grey-brown shape that moves inside it. A Porsa, come oozing back through, and more behind it. They’re bigger, a lot bigger, barely able to squeeze through the aperture, and without the suit to muffle his hearing their fusillade of angry clicking echoes around the space. 

Olosuga turns on Billy with a snarl, careless of the arm that Goody wrenches behind his back, and pins him against the railing. ‘You’ll give ‘em that creature one way or another.’ 

He forces Billy outwards over the lip of the platform; the metal bar bites into his back and one of his ribs gives way, cracking in a wash of fire. Goody unleashes a flurry of quick-stutter motion that seems to reach into Olosuga’s abdomen and Olosuga’s breath whistles through his teeth, but his grip is steady, inexorable, and Billy can’t tell any more whether the wave of terror is the symbiont’s or his own. 

In desperation he buries his blade hilt-deep in Olosuga’s shoulder, but it’s as effective as a mosquito bite; he feels the rail fracture beneath him and something wet touches the back of his neck with a greedy snuffle. _Goody…_

He has no breath to form the word, but Goody’s there, his fist coming down, wide of the mark, snapping the railing cleanly in two. _Hold on_, is all he can think of as he starts to fall, _hold onto the knife and take him with you…_

An agonising blow on his wrist makes his hand spasm, and suddenly Goody is holding him gasping on the brink as Olosuga tumbles into the well. 

The Porsa fall on their prize without hesitation, surrounding him in a pack, rearing up behind and above him to cut off any avenue of escape. Olosuga is strong and fast, but they’re many and remorseless, force no use against their billowing flesh or the slime that coats him in a tacky web. The crush of so many muscular bodies is enough to immobilise him, but engulfing him takes time and he’s still fighting as he’s swallowed down. 

Billy can’t tear his gaze from the stomach-churning spectacle of rippling flesh; Goody has to shake him back to attention, grey-skinned with revulsion. ‘We have to get out.’ 

He slides an arm around Billy’s back and they start towards the door, but a thud from outside freezes them. It comes again, turning into a rain of frustrated hammering, and Billy curses the distance to the airlock – Goody might make it alone, but outside on the flat he won’t stand a chance. 

‘The overflow.’ Goody tugs him forward. ‘While they’re occupied.’ 

It’s the only other way out, beyond the roil of glistening bodies, but Billy digs his heels in. ‘No.’ He can imagine it all too easily, the trail of slime underfoot and the touch of feelers in the dark. 

Goody hauls at him with baffled urgency. ‘You got a better suggestion? Door won’t hold up for long.’ Billy raises his eyes to the network of pipes that snake overhead and Goody follows his gaze. ‘Seriously?’ 

‘It’ll come out at the waste nexus, outside the airlock. Won’t be fun, but we’ll fit.’ 

‘Have to get in there first.’ But Goody’s already scaling the wall, testing the pipe for weakness at its seams. The door is already starting to bow on its hinges as Billy stands ready below, ribs stabbing despite the symbiont’s efforts. 

‘Shit.’ The pipe breaks open and a fountain of sludge pours out, bathing them both. ‘Won’t be wearing this jacket again.’ Billy would laugh if he weren’t so tired. ‘C’mon, before the smell attracts them.’ As Goody takes his hand and hauls him up Billy looks back at the heaving mass in the recess and wishes he hadn’t.

The pipe is wide enough, just, but pitch dark and foul: the symbiont’s distaste mingles with his own nausea. Goody grins resignedly. ‘After you.’

The question burns in his throat all the length of the cramped choking journey, and when they tumble out into the waste dump, smeared and stinking, it forces its way up past gulps of rich clean air. ‘Will they be able to digest him?’ 

He didn’t think Goody could look more nauseated. ‘I don’t know.’

\--

The Glam Club’s full, music pounding as the sixclone weave and shimmer; Billy is sitting in front of the stage for once, in a loose tunic over his half-suit, though he’s sipping abstemiously at a tulaberry juice. Faraday, already considerably wasted, scrutinises him with intrusive fascination over the clutter of bulbs, bowls and inhalers that litter the table. ‘You seriously going to let it live on you?’ 

Billy tilts his head so Faraday can see the symbiont clamped above his collarbone. ‘For a while. It likes it here.’ 

Faraday looks slightly green. ‘You can hear it thinking?’ 

Billy shrugs. ‘That’s how it works. It senses emotions and shares its own.’ 

‘And you don’t take it off?’ His goggle-eyed anxiety is comical. ‘Even when you…’ He tails off, uncharacteristically delicate. 

‘When he what, cowboy?’ asks Vasquez, a gleam in his eye. He’s making the most of Goody’s invitation, reclined in his chair with a catboy on his knee, drawing on a somatube. 

‘When you, y’know.’ Faraday flaps a hand. ‘And Goody too.’ 

Billy winks. ‘Paradise Alley is an eye-opener for any species.’

‘Hey, when did Goody get himself a new jacket?’ Vasquez is squinting over Billy’s shoulder. ‘And why is that guy with him wearing an octopus?’ 

Billy turns to see Goody heading in their direction with Sam in tow and reaches discreetly to fasten his collar. 

‘…how they slimed their way in we don’t know – nearly caused a diplomatic incident with the mantas, but we cleaned out the lowest level of the sector, and we’ll do the same to the other hydro habitats. Every time you think you’ve seen it all…’ 

‘Alpha’s a rich tapestry,’ agrees Goody, mouth crooking. ‘Vasquez, let me introduce my friend Has Oblett.’ Sam turns a reproachful look on Goody, but he grins wide. ‘Oblett, Vasquez.’ 

‘Any friend of Goody’s a friend of mine,’ declares Vasquez expansively. ‘Cigar?’

‘Takisian?’ Sam’s temper improves miraculously; Vasquez flinches as the familiar round Sam’s neck reaches out a tentacle to pluck the offered smoke delicately from his grasp. 

‘More bulbs?’ Goody raises a hand, but Faraday jumps to his feet. ‘I’ll go,’ he offers; Goody huffs in amusement as he sets a direct course for the bar where Citizen Cullen is presiding in a daringly slashed red outfit which matches her braided hair. 

‘Bring more grubs if they’ve got ‘em hot,’ Vasquez calls after him.

Billy exchanges a smile with Goody and the symbiont sends an echoing pulse as it savours his good humour and relaxation. What he told Faraday was true: his passenger is a traveller like he was, moving from place to place and host to host, sightseeing around the galaxy, and the ultimate melting pot of Alpha rewards it with more new sights and sensations than it can process. The advantages it offers him professionally have been a revelation, and privately it’s gifted him a fresh appreciation of the unusual niche he’s come to occupy and just how much he has to be grateful for. 

Faraday returns, clattering an armful of bulbs and plates onto the table. ‘Woman and a half there. Got a tongue could take the hide off a Judoon.’ 

They look across to the bar where Citizen Cullen is berating a shrinking Pa’lowick, its skin shaded the mottled green of embarrassment. ‘She’s found her feet,’ Goody approves, with a wink to Sam. ‘Customers are all terrified of her. I’ve told her the job’s hers as long as she wants it.’ 

‘What did you say to her?’ Vasquez asks his partner wearily, picking up a skewer of grubs. 

Faraday slouches back in his chair, drink in hand. ‘Just suggested she might appreciate the opportunity to buy a parasang which recently came into my possession.’ 

‘A parasang?’ asks Sam unwisely. ‘It work?’ 

Faraday grins like a hiver. ‘Most certainly does, and I’d be more than happy to offer a personal demonstration.’ 

Billy stands up before he can burst out laughing at Goody’s expression of horror. ‘Showtime.’

He stands on the stage, motionless in the spotlight as the low steady beat begins, relishing the singing moment of tension and anticipation; the symbiont shivers in delight as it tastes the heady mixture of expectation and desire. His gaze sweeps across the audience and in his newly-expanded senses the crowds light up into a constellation flaring with admiration, pleasure, and the deeper pulse of lust. His friends make a glowing cluster of brightness, warm with affection, and at their centre he sees the nova that’s Goodnight, ablaze with pride and love. 

Billy begins to dance, in his element, revelling in the power he wields, drawing the audience in and shaping their emotions until he’s holding the whole galaxy in the palm of his hand. His eyes seek Goody’s, and when he finds them Goody raises his glass of trax spirit in salute, its drifting scintillae sparkling like stars in the light of the stage.

**Author's Note:**

> Additional alien races, planets, events and background details have been drawn from: 
> 
> Sheri S. Tepper, _Raising the Stones_; Tony Daniels, _A Dry, Quiet War_; Ian Gibson, _Halo Jones_; George RR Martin, _Tuf Voyaging_ and _Dying of the Light_; David Brin, _Uplift Trilogy_; Iain Banks, Culture novels; and the works of Neal Asher, China Mieville, Cordwainer Smith, Vonda N. McIntyre, Ian McDonald and Robert Silverberg; _Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly, Red Dwarf, Dark Star, Alien II, Dr Who, Mass Effect, Endless Space, World of Warcraft_ and Marvel Comics.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Night Out on Paradise Alley](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26620636) by [Fontainebleau](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fontainebleau/pseuds/Fontainebleau)


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